Barstow clearly placed Partch on a new compositional path, but two final years of homeless wandering passed before he began to travel it. When he did return to the hobo in his music, he crafted a composition that became the cornerstone of his passage from the hobo jungles to the periphery of the American musical culture that he so scorned. That piece, based like Barstow on scribbled passages from a pocket notebook that reveled in hobo voices, was substantively different from the hitchhiker-inscribed work. These scribbled passages were words spoken by and to the composer, and the hobo voices were his own as often as those of others. U.S. Highball recounted Partch's own hobo journey and as such was a distinctly personal work, casting his triumphs and tragedies out for the world to share. Ultimately U.S. Highball became the work through which he demonstrated his version of a conceptually exotic American musical sound, and first argued for a renaissance of ancient musical practices in a modern language. It is such a pivotal work in Partch's output that it also acts as this study's cornerstone, the work through which Partch's full engagement with the hobo is most clearly defined.

U.S. Highball's reception throughout its lifespan clearly reflects Partch's success in communicating his adventure.